This is a very nice "little unit" that really puts out the water. Compared to anything out there that I have seen, it produces more water and delivers it faster. What I really like about it stat it is installed in a very short time and takes up very little space and provides a full 1.5 gallons at full pressure. Because it is a WOW tank its waste is minimum and production is very fast.

Most RO tanks have two chambers. One with product water taking up 30% of the tank. The other is air charged with around 7-9psi. As water goes the faucet, it loses pressure until the water just dribbles out.

With a WOW tank, your source water pressure drive to water. This can mean your water is being pushed by 40-60 psi and continues until the tank is empty without diminishing.

The Next-Ro is a spectacular design but it has struggled to gain traction yet. I beleive that with the right marketing, this can be a huge hit in our industry. Most water treatement dealers who have been around a long time are familiar with the WOW design from previous manufacturers. The older designs were innovative, but they were ahead of their time and the complexity of the systems were their failure. The Next-RO has removed the majority of the problems associated with a WOW design. Still, for the water treatment industry, a standard (traditional) RO works well in the majority of applications, the simple addition of a Permeate Pump increases the efficiency tremendously for very little additional cost. I am a huge fan of the Next-Ro, I just dont see our industry embracing it for a while. It has been around for many years now, and the interest has been low. This is too bad, because a WOW design makes sense.

I agree with the premise of WOW design. It is how membrane technology first started to be. That and continuous waste to the drain, which kept the membrane fresh. But water storage/space needs and waste control began to restrict ROs full potential. The WOW eliminates a few of those problems and we will see these become standard in the coming years...a lot manual shifts were once called 'standard' transmissions so will go the air-charged tank.

well.... The air charged tank has been on its death bed for over 20 years when WOW and direct flow first came out and now with the modified EDI systems. But.... the WOW and direct flow are still niche products. We manufacture a lot of direct flow designs, and price still rules when it comes to system design. Adding the proper controls and devices required to make direct flow work properly raises the price and complexity too high to make it a viable product, so most of ours go out with all of the known flaws that are inherent in the design. WOW has similar design limitations, and considering the extremely simple, and very low cost of a "traditional" R.O., I still dont see the design showing any sings of slowing down. There are a couple of direct flow RO manufacturers out there, we have tested them extensively. The design is great, but the complexity and certain design limitations will have to be overcome as will the price limitations.
BTW, I am not a fan of the air charged tanks, I sell hundreds of thousands a year, and they are basically a loss leader for us. They take up too much floor space, and we make extremely low margins on them. Next-Ro has really pushed the quality and design forward for the WOW market, I just hope they find a good market for that product. It has more potential than any other WOW design I have seen.

Back in the day, when I was just starting my career in the water treatment industry, I had the pleasure of working for a company that sold a lot of HP-6 units. The HydroPure WOW design with the faucet that looked like a leafless tree under the counter. The majority of the control were on the faucet instead of in the RO head. This system also had encapsulated GAC filters that were not serviceable, I guess you were supposed to throw the whole system away every time the GAC filter needed to be replaced. These were one of the first WOW RO systems to be mass marketed. They were quickly replaced by the Hydrotech RO. The design was very unique, but the complexity doomed it from the start.

I have collected manuals for 20 years on water treatment systems, unfortunately, that is one I am missing. From what I remember, there was a lot of contreversy due to patent issues so the system had even more limitations to keep it legal. It worked great some of the time, but we quickly switched over to the the standard HT-4 by Hydrotech to get away from all of the problems. I had one in my moms house for a short amount of time, I remember I was very anxious to get rid of it and put in the HT-4, I was about as impressed with that unit as I was the old Fleck CTA RO with built in water heater (used to increase flow rate, and electrical usage!). Now we manufacture our own proprietary RO which is marketed under several names, and we have been doing a lot of direct flow units overseas. The direct flow has proven to be a pain in too many ways to describe. We have fond a great way to make the direct flow systems work, ... we add a tank to them. Al of our direct flow units now come with optional tank hook ups.

When you say 'direct flow' RO, are you including the Merlin? I had always thought that would be a great RO for some applications and I know a company that was using it for a while but quit due to service callbacks. I thought they were using them in the wrong application but did like the idea.

I am still looking for that previous WOW system you had mentioned. Do you have any links? PM me if you need.

The merlin is one example of a direct flow design. There are a multitude of problems with direct flow designs, we have designed out a few of them. All of them could be designed out but the complexity of the system and the cost increase makes them difficult to market compared to a traditional RO.

We even do a Proprietary (sanitary quick change) direct flow ro system, but we have not released it in the US market, only overseas. The US market is much more demanding on system performance than other markets, and the majority of households have ice makers, refrigerated water, etc, that the direct flow systms tend to have difficult with. The Merlin can be a great RO, and you are absolutely right, it needs to be used in the right application to perform. The merlin has been re-released, and they have improved on the original design considerably.

The HP-6, I have no literature on, but I have a friend who was an assembler of them at the factory in California 20+ years ago, I will email him and see if he still has any literature on it.

The Next-Ro is a spectacular design but it has struggled to gain traction yet. I beleive that with the right marketing, this can be a huge hit in our industry. Most water treatement dealers who have been around a long time are familiar with the WOW design from previous manufacturers. The older designs were innovative, but they were ahead of their time and the complexity of the systems were their failure. The Next-RO has removed the majority of the problems associated with a WOW design. Still, for the water treatment industry, a standard (traditional) RO works well in the majority of applications, the simple addition of a Permeate Pump increases the efficiency tremendously for very little additional cost. I am a huge fan of the Next-Ro, I just dont see our industry embracing it for a while. It has been around for many years now, and the interest has been low. This is too bad, because a WOW design makes sense.

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The NEXT-RO looks advantageous. Why has interest in NEXT-RO been low? Marketing? Cost compared to a standard RO + Permeate Pump? Are there any issues with the design that have not yet been addressed?

Just from the looks of it, I see problems with it fitting under all sinks.

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Actually, it takes less space than any other RO. It is a about one foot square and only 10 inches tall. It fits under most garbage disposals. It can be moved easily and actually transported to temporary locations with a standard male/female faucet attachment.

As far as fitting under ALL sinks, there will always some that cannot accommodate it but other ROs would be even harder to install, in general.

It doesn't need a permeate pump unless incoming water pressure is too low. That would be needed with another RO even more because standard ROs' membranes are also fighting the air pressure from the holding tank. It doesn't need a delivery pump because it uses your household pressure (30-6 psi) instead of tank pressure (7-11 psi). This shoots water to the faucet and fridge and pressure doesn't decrease as tanks empties like in air-charged tanks.

Tank refills immediately after drawing water not waiting till 60 volume is lost. This keeps the tank full all the time.

I would say marketing needs to improve. price is extremely competitive.

Presently, there are limited filter options but I think they are working on that.

In my 1st post I was asking if the cost of a NEXT-RO was an issue compared to the cost of a good quality standard RO plus the cost of a Permeate Pump? (I understand the water pressure benefits of a WOW tank.)

What additional filters would be most helpful? Does the manifold need more than 3 connections for filters similar to a K5?

No, there are three connection pre-, membrane and post-filter. Additional filter choices to address nitrate/nitrite, arsenic, and other contaminants could be beneficial. I am not sure about competitive pricing scales unless you could suggest an example. The NEXT RO is actually a very nice unit and requires little attention. great for new fridges with shut-off solenoids on ice-makers.

Do wow tanks get NSF cerification? By desing the posibility of contaminating drinking water is huge posibility. Also i do not see how these units are more efficient than regular RO units, as per specs on the website its just like any other undercounter RO i know.